Oubliette
by Gamebird
Summary: Set in Season 2, between "Four Months Ago …" and "Four Months Later …" Confined to a shipping container for nearly three weeks without food, water, company, or rest, Peter barely hangs onto his sanity.


**Title: **Oubliette  
**Characters:** Peter Petrelli  
**Rating:** PG  
**Warnings:** None  
**Word count:** 900  
**Setting:** Season 2, between "Four Months Ago …" and "Four Months Later …"  
**Summary:** Confined to a shipping container for nearly three weeks without food, water, company, or rest, Peter barely hangs onto his sanity.  
**Notes:** Cargo shipping time from New York City to Cork, Ireland is around three weeks. People die in three to five days from dehydration, but that assumes they're able to lie down and rest as needed. I am assuming that regeneration kicks in when Peter falls unconscious, but that it doesn't work while he's awake. 'Oubliette' means 'forgotten place' in French, and is the name of a particular type of dungeon or prison.

He woke with a start, bathed in hopeless darkness. His memory, what of it he had, told him this was just like the time before, and the time before that. The rest of him hoped, fervently, that his memory was wrong and those were just recurrent nightmares. After all, it didn't make any sense. Unlike his horrific dreams, his head was clear; his tongue wasn't swollen from dehydration; his stomach wasn't vacillating between aching in hunger and being strangely numb; and his arm … _Oh my God, my arm!_ Nightmare or not, he got to his feet in a hurried scramble. He was still chained to the wall, but his arm was fine. It felt perfectly okay. It didn't hurt like he'd wrenched it over and over. It didn't burn with agony as if it was on fire, like it had after he'd finally collapsed and before he'd passed out. But that was all fake, right?

He felt down his arm to the wrist. There weren't any gouges from where he recalled trying to break his hand to get free of his restraints. He comforted himself by thinking his sufferings must have been a hallucination conjured by his overactive imagination. He certainly had lots of opportunity for that. The sensory deprivation was acute and constant, paired with a yearning deep inside to see people – anyone. He didn't know if there was someone in particular he was wishing to see, because he couldn't remember any faces. He couldn't remember_ anything _– nothing that predated waking up in this hellhole with a sharp sense of abandonment and a bizarre nightmare that he would eventually become weak from privation and be unable to stand … and then the real torture would come as his arm inflicted terrible pain on him due merely to the stress position of having it elevated constantly. He wouldn't be able to rest … and then the cycle would repeat.

He didn't why he was in here. He didn't know who he was. He didn't even know _where_ he was. It seemed to be a metal cell, but there was no evident captor – no light, no sound, even the smell of the place didn't change. If he'd done something wrong to merit this punishment, he regretted it completely without even knowing what that might be. He just wanted out. He wanted to see people. He didn't want to be trapped in a hole somewhere, forgotten and neglected. He tugged restlessly at the handcuff, the mental and emotional anguish of his captivity as strong as the physical.

His fingers went again to the shackle, exploring it in the blackness just like he remembered having done time and time again. But wasn't that just a bad dream? He felt along the restraint, wondering if it was possible to get out of it if he was willing to break his thumb in the process. In the dream, he'd thought this out, too; even tried it, repeatedly, along with considering chewing his own hand off when the pain got bad, but by then he was too weak. Something gritty scraped off from the metal. He scratched at it with blunt nails, flaking more off and cupping his other hand to capture the residue. He pinched it up, rolled it between fingertips and then tasted – blood, long dried.

It was no nightmare! A sense of urgency and despair went through him with a shock. It had really happened. He'd been forced to stand until delirium sent him first to his knees and finally sagging even further. That was when his arm would inflict the last torture – enough to goad him back to his feet time after time until he could no longer rise. Eventually, in wretched agony, he'd find release in unconsciousness, only to be revived to endure it all over again. He shuddered and began to yell for help. Just as he had before, and before that. And like then, there was no response.

Time passed. It felt like days or maybe even weeks. With a rasping voice that echoed in the metallic chamber, he begged for sleep or lack of awareness. His stomach churned and his mouth dried and his knees became weak and his head swam. His hand did not break when he tried to free himself; his arm ached when he wrenched it and eventually could not remain on his feet to relieve the pressure. When the clatter of metal on metal sounded across his ears, he thought it must be a part of the nightmare. He woke with a start to be blinded by strange, searching beams of light.


End file.
